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Shaped Fine/Ultra-Fine Wires Make A Differance
By Mike Greenelsh, President, California Fine Wire, Grover Beach, CA
Dramatic product improvements are coming in increasingly smaller sizes. Whether in computer chips or household appliances, the demands for miniaturization, increased performance and on-board functionalities are getting greater every day. When you consider product improvements in any walk of life, one thing is eminently clear: It pays to think small. One of the smallest manufacturing commodities, and a principal enabler of product improvements, is fine wire. It can be found in products all around us. Fine wire is integral to integrated circuits, indispensable to telecommunications devices, critical to surgical instrumentation and essential to kitchen conveniences. And the ability to use shaped fine and ultra-fine wire of various alloys can make a huge difference in product design and performance. When it comes to shaping fine and ultra-fine wire, with dimensions from 0.0003-in. (one-tenth the thickness of the typical human hair), producing consistent quality is challenging. Products made from shaped fine wire normally require Six to Eight Sigma consistency, ultra close tolerances and often special materials as used in medicine, aerospace, cryogenics, microelectronics, testing and other leading-edge industries. In addition to more commonplace uses, there are many highly specialized applications such as cochlear hearing implants, heart probes and telemetry devices. Shaped fine wire is also used in unusual applications such as the Z Pulse Accelerator at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, NM. Generally speaking, shaped fine wire does not have a round cross-section, the “normal” form in which it is drawn. Shaped fine wire may be square, square or rectangular with rounded corners, hexagonal or a variety of other geometric possibilities, including ribbon. The shape specified can relate to a broad range of requirements, such as current carrying capacity, flexibility, corrosion resistance and temperature-related characteristics. Most of these properties also relate to metals and other materials from which the wire is made. Shaped fine wire is often specified for electrical coils and solenoids, because it stacks together tightly, eliminating the voids that frequently occur when round wire is used. Square- or rectangular-shaped wires stack tightly on one another, resulting in higher current density, which is sought by many electronics manufacturers today. Flexibility and weight are two properties that led IBM to work with California Fine Wire to produce a coil used in the search heads of IBM computers. The coil must perform its searches at a very high speed while the head jumps back and forth gathering information. To withstand the stresses resulting from such constant high-speed movement, IBM decided to use lightweight aluminum wire rather than copper, thereby greatly reducing wear and tear on the equipment and minimizing failures. A surprisingly large number of differently-shaped fine wires are available. For example, California Fine Wire offers 1,000 different metals and alloys, 90 percent of which can be pulled or rolled into shapes. This number is multiplied by the variety of different coatings available for use in strengthening or insulating the wire itself. Shaped wire can be insulated against extreme temperatures with coating materials such as Cercal, a glass/metal compound with an operating range of 368 to 1300°F. The medical sciences use fine wire in a creative way to make the catheters that are so popular for use in microsurgery today. They use ribbon-shaped wire to make the outer shape of the catheter. They wind the ribbon on an edge to make it extremely flexible, so it's easier to manage with a device such as a joystick. The catheter containing a miniature camera or other device can then be directed accurately through the blood vessels of the human body, and you can see it passing through it by using X-ray or MRI. Shaped wire ribbon is also frequently used in semiconductors when a high current capacity is required. Power chips contain perhaps 1,000 small-resistance semiconductor switches, and if even one of those gets overheated and wipes out, the entire integrated circuit is blown. Wire ribbon can be used to prevent such overheating by dissipating the heat over a larger surface area. Shaped wire can also provide greater integral strength. With at least 30 percent more material, square- or rectangular-shaped wire can provide substantially greater strength in either vertical or horizontal directions. In high-temperature situations, for example, ribbon shapes can enhance performance and also allow products to cool more quickly. Shaped fine wire of various metals is used throughout science and industry, but it is also used in more commonplace everyday products. For example, the spring used in ball-point pens is actually a fine wire product. Jewelry often incorporates shaped fine wire in fasteners. It is used in the semiconductors in your microwave oven. The mundane household toaster has been dramatically improved in terms of performance and energy savings by replacing round-wire heating elements with more efficient ribbon wire. And future products will very likely include more shaped fine wire than ever. For more information, contact: California Fine Wire, P.O. Box 446, Grover Beach, CA 93483. Tel: 805-489-5144; fax: 805-489-5352. Web: http://www.calfinewire.com |
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